The Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences, interdisciplinary research centres at the Pennsylvania State University, has appointed Dipanjan Pan as the inaugural director for innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystems.
Pan is the Dorothy Foehr Huck & J. Lloyd Huck Chair professor in nanomedicine and professor of materials science and engineering and of nuclear engineering, having joined Penn State in July 2022.
His new mandate covers helping faculty, postdocs, and graduate students navigate commercialisation aspects such as scaling, funding, IP, and government regulation.
Pan brings considerable expertise to the role: he has founded five spinouts since he began his academic career at Washington University in St Louis in 2007.
“I don’t keep starting companies for the sake of starting them. I keep doing it because each venture is a chance to turn ideas into impact, build new teams and learn something I didn’t know before.
“The most important thing for faculty to know is that entrepreneurship requires a different mindset and set of partnerships than academia. They don’t have to do it alone, but they do have to learn to frame their science as a solution, protect their intellectual property, build the right team, and be intentional about balancing academic and entrepreneurial responsibilities.”
Dipanjan Pan
